In 1920, the year that Irving Langmuir coined the
term "plasma", the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington was already
developing the nuclear fusion model of stars. The first step in
Eddington's reasoning was a simple question: Does the power that makes
the stars shine come from the stars themselves, or does it come from
somewhere else? And the answer he chose was that the power that makes
the stars shine comes from the stars themselves.

With that assumption, he laid the foundation for
the now-accepted theory of stars powered by fusion within their cores.
This theory has been developed over the last 80 years into an
all-encompassing model of stellar evolution and is deemed to be the
proven explanation of what makes the stars shine. But a lot of new data
and a lot of new ideas have come to bear on that foundation since 1920,
and a number of scientists think a stronger and larger foundation is
needed.

The Electric Universe model, following C. E. R.
Bruce and Ralph Jeurgens, proposes a new theory that takes into account
all that has been learned about plasma behavior in the laboratory and in
space. We ask Eddington's question again: Does the power that makes the
stars shine come from the stars themselves, or does it come from
somewhere else? And the answer we choose is that the stars shine because
they are connected to the electric circuitry of the galaxy.

An electric star's brightness depends on the power
of the electric current feeding it, not on the amount of nuclear fuel it
has available to burn. Consequently, an electric star doesn't evolve.

In the nuclear view, a "planetary nebula", such as
the one which produced the intricate Cat's Eye Nebula (image above) is
the "death throes" of a star that has run out of nuclear fuel. In the
Electric Universe view, a planetary nebula is an overload, the flare-up
of a star under abnormal electrical stress. The filamentary cellular
structures seen here are characteristic of plasma behavior. Among those
characteristics are concentric spheres, rays, intertwining spirals,
bubbles formed of filaments and networks of filaments, and dusty
pillars.

The most striking feature of the central part of
this nebula is its polar symmetry. This is where the galactic Birkeland
currents that feed the star "pinch" down into a galactic thunderbolt.
The shape is similar to those of Zeus's thunderbolt drawn by ancient
astronomers.

The electrical stress no doubt produces massive
nuclear reactions in much the same way that we produce nuclear reactions
in a laboratory by bombarding targets with electrically accelerated
particles. And in the same way the reactions occur on and near the
surface, not in the core.

Because the Cat's Eye Nebula is composed of plasma
instead of merely hot gasses, its structure and development are
consequences of electrical discharge rather than of an explosion and
shock waves. The source of the energy is not the star at the core of the
nebula, but the same galactic electric circuit which created and powered
the star throughout its life.